Since my book came out in May I've been lucky enough to have been a guest on over 60 radio shows across the country (you can listen to a selection HERE). At first I was uncomfortable, but after I had a few under my belt I became very at ease with live radio. I even looked forward to each interview as a challenge, not knowing what questions a host would throw at me. I think I had a much easier time than the usual author because with the exception of but one interviewer, I could tell the hosts had actually read my book. Many times the host would tell me before the interview or during a commercial break that they do not always get the chance to or necessarily want to read the books they get in, but the League of Outsider Baseball was an exception. A few of the radio station engineers even told me that the guys in the office were fighting over who got to keep the book! I can't tell you how proud that made me feel inside.
Although the range of questions thrown at me were wildly different (heck, there are 240 pages of stories to choose from!) there were two that always seemed to pop up. The first, and most difficult, was "Who's your favorite player in the book?" That's a tough one as it changes all the time. One day I might like the Frankie Zak story because it was personal to me, while another day I would say the Farmer Dean story because no one ever wrote about him before me. It would have been easier for me to answer a trigonometry question instead of who's my favorite!
The other question that came up often is "How did you find the players in the book?" That one was easier to answer, though there is no single answer. If you've read this blog for some time, you already know that sometimes I find mentions of a player in a book about a better known player - like Ford Meadows. This was the guy who was deemed a better prospect than a young Babe Ruth in 1913 Baltimore. He was briefly mentioned in a Ruth biography and I wanted to know who that guy was - so I did. Or another way I find ideas is like what happened with the Lou Gehrig story in the book. I remember hearing that a young Gehrig played under an assumed name for a town team in New Jersey when he was a student at Columbia. This is briefly touched on in a few Gehrig books but with no details given. I dug and dug and found a guy in Morristown, New Jersey who was also researching this forgotten part of Gehrig's life. He was kind enough to share what he found and I built upon that to the point where I tracked down not only box scores from his time in Morristown but also a team photograph that had once hung in a tavern that had long since closed. The third way I find stories is simply by accident. Sometimes I just stumble upon an interesting newspaper article when researching something entirely separate. That's how I came upon Farmer Dean when I was researching the 1935 Tokyo Giants American Tour. When I do come across those hidden gems I print them out or make notes and put them in a bulging manila folder which I usually take with me on business trips or on airplanes to pass the time. It was on my recent trip to Los Angeles to accept the 2015 Salin Award that I re-discovered the star of today's post: Red Solomon.
In the summer of 1929 the woeful Chicago Cubs suddenly emerged as a National League contender. In the decade since their drubbing in the 1918 World Series by Babe Ruth and the Red Sox, the Cubs had foundered. Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley purchased the team in 1926 and began making positive changes to the club. Backed by Wrigley's deep pockets, Cubs president William Veeck, Sr. began to assemble a team of proven veterans and promising cast-offs. By spring training 1929, the Cubs had a solid roster and was poised to wrestle the pennant from the defending Pittsburgh Pirates. That year's edition of Northsiders fielded a squad of sluggers that rivaled the Yankees Murderer's Row: Hack Wilson, Rogers Hornsby, Kiki Kuyler... all future Hall of Famers. Their pitching staff was among the best in both leagues with Pat Malone leading the NL with 22 victories and Charlie Root and Guy Bush winning 19 and 18 games respectively. And like the Yankees' Murderer's Row, the Cubs also led the league in characters. Pat Malone and Hack Wilson were the life of a seemingly never-ending party of gin-joints, speakeasies and road houses. Their manager Joe McCarthy, a journeyman infielder who never made the big leagues, defied his many detractors and led the Cubbies to 98 wins. In that last summer before the Great Depression descended on the nation, the 1929 Cubs were the last gasp of the Roarin' 20's fun and excess.
Despite all the newspaper and press coverage lavished on the Cubbies that summer, very few moving images exist of the team. One of the rare reels that remain was shot by Movietone News at the Polo Grounds on August 18th. Among the shots of Hack Wilson and Kiki Cuyler and the fellas limbering up before the game is a segment featuring the team's wonder manager Joe McCarthy and a short freckle-faced kid. McCarthy smiles uneasily, obviously still not used to all the attention foisted upon him as leader of the best team in the National league. The freckle-faced kid on the other hand, pounds his glove and looks totally natural in his grey pinstriped uniform with "NY KAWANIS" written across the chest. Remarkably, it's a "talkie", the latest in moving picture technology at the time. After a few false starts McCarthy puts his hand on the boy's shoulder and says "Folks, I want you to meet Red Solomon, the Jewish boy with the Irish face". McCarthy goes on to say that the kid is the youngest ballplayer to sign a major league contract and he'll be 13 years-old next month.
And finally there's a great shot of little Red standing with a group of six Chicago Cubs. Each man has on a dirty road uniform and a scowl on his face - including little Red. Afterwards Red plays catch with a few of his "future teammates", the older men yelling back and forth telling the kid to take it easy as he's too young to have a sore arm. Then the film reel runs out and the Cubs and Red are gone.
Turns out Samuel Solomon - called "Red" for his flaming red hair - was well known around New York City. Red's Kiwanis Club sponsored team played in a city-wide sandlot league run by the impressively-named Captain George H. Maines, former president of the Michigan-Ontario League. The organization Maines put together wasn't just some suburban Little League - the loop boasted over 1,000 teams with more than 15,000 boys - of which Red Solomon stood out as the very best. At the age of 12 Red not only was the team's star third baseman but he also managed the team. The newspaper articles I found seem to all have a line in them about how Red Solomon's timely hitting or robust defense saved or won the game. The 1928 Bronx Kiwanis club finished with a 20-1 record and capped off the season by winning the city-wide sandlot championship.
So Red Solomon was already fairly known to New Yorkers when the announcement came that he was signed by the Chicago Cubs. Back in 1915 the New York Giants had signed 15 year-old Waite Hoyt, but the 75 pound freckle-faced redhead made Hoyt look like he was a grizzled veteran. After Solomon put his signature on a contract, Cubs manager Joe McCarthy told the assembled writers "I consider young Solomon the best natural baseball player for his size I have ever seen".
After news of the historic signing made the newspapers and newsreels, Red worked out with the Cubs whenever they played in New York, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Wearing a pint-sized Cubs uniform, Red took batting tips from the great Rogers Hornsby and roomed on the road with outfielder Kiki Cuyler. He was quoted time and again proclaiming himself "the luckiest boy in the whole world". The Cubs put their young prospect on a strict regimen designed to turn him into a future star. Before he signed his Cubs contract, Red told sportswriters that his typical breakfast consisted of a doughnut and cup of coffee. Now the Chicago trainers had the boy eating fresh fruit each morning.
Realizing that being a big league ball player did not stop after a game, Red was paired with Miss Betty Van Alan who would teach him the proper etiquette expected of a major leaguer. A newspaper printed a list of commandments that Red was to live by under his most unique apprenticeship, of which some are quite obvious:
• Bathe after every baseball game
• Don't smoke or drink
• Brush your teeth
while some are quite quaint:
• Help another boy every day
• Don't ever be late for an appointment
• Study your baseball rules
and others are, well, sort of bizarre:
• Don't butter a whole slice of bread
• Don't drink milk with meat
• Don't cut a salad with a knife
• Don't wash your food down with water
• Don't cut more than one piece of meat at a time
While many news stories portrayed the Red Solomon signing as a feel-good human interest piece, others did not see it so positive. Cubs skipper Joe McCarthy said later that he received many angry letters from mothers berating him for allowing a 13 year-old to play on the same field as grown men. The concerned moms warned of the dangers a screaming liner would do to the 75 pound third baseman. Some sports writers warned of how difficult adult 20 year-old rookies found the pressures and expectations of trying to make good in the big leagues - how would a 13 year-old boy be able to cope with all that?
The Cubs took the National League pennant by 10 1/2 games and prepared to meet the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. The '29 A's were perhaps the greatest team ever assembled in the history of the Major Leagues, but Red for one was not worried. In the build up to the Series he was often quoted in the papers as predicting a quick finish to the Philadelphians. Red's optimistic outlook and earnest appeal led to him being picked up as a featured correspondent for United Press International wire service.
Unfortunately Red's optimism didn't last long. The Athletics completely dismantled the Cubs in 5 games. Red's articles are at first fun to read, written from the perspective of a 13 year-old fan and featuring peppy little "interviews" with the Cubs players. But after each heart-breaking loss Red struggles more and more to stay optimistic. Game 4 saw Chicago's 8-0 lead evaporate in an A's 10 run 7th inning and in the fifth and final game Philadelphia rallied for a 3 run ninth to bet the Cubs 3-2. The humiliating loss was a devastating surprise. Perhaps the first line of Red's final dispatch best sums up the Cubs fans' frustration and dismay:
"What's the use of writing a story now? It's all over."
The Cubs slinked back to Chicago and Red returned to school in the Bronx. Although he says in his final dispatch that he would be back with Cubs for the 1930 campaign he never did. Like most people already knew, the Cubs signing of little Red was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Capt. Maines, the guy who ran the league Red played in, had drummed up the whole scheme to publicize his organization. Most likely the Captain approached and had been turned down by the local Yankees, Giants and Dodgers before the Cubs took the bait. Bill Veeck, Sr. obviously possessed some of the huckster mentality his more well-known son turned into an art form when he ran the Browns, Indians and White Sox.
Red continued to play superb sandlot ball, first with his Kiwanis club and then with the Bronx Incas. Solomon's name could be found in the New York sports pages throughout the summer of 1932 and 33 when he starred for a team assembled by the New York Yankees. When Red tried to join another amateur league he was temporarily banned because he failed to secure a waiver from his former club - sandlot ball in 1930's New York sure wasn't like today's Little League - these guys were serious!
Finally in the summer of 1933 Red was old enough to be invited to try out for the Brooklyn Dodgers. On the very morning of the tryout Red was practicing with the Incas at Cretona Park when a runner crashed into him as he covered third base. When the dust settled Red lay in a heap, his left leg suffering a double compound break. Solomon was rushed to Morrisania Hospital where doctors told the newspapers his baseball career was through. Fortunately though, Red had friends in places a normal teen didn't. Joe McCarthy, Cubs skipper back in '29, was now managing the New York Yankees right there in the Bronx. When the Yanks heard of Red's dire prognosis the team sent their own doctors to work on the boy and by the end of September Red was expected to make a full recovery. In the meantime, to help Red's family pay for all the hospital bills a benefit baseball game was held at the Polo Grounds when the Giants were out of town. While he was laid up in the hospital Joe McCarthy came calling with a ball signed to him by Rogers Hornsby, his old teammate from 1929 and now manager of the Browns. Red's old bunk mate Kiki Cuyler dropped by when the Cubbies were playing the Giants and fellow Bronx native Hank Greenberg made an appearance. Red may not have been on a big league roster but he sure had friends of major league quality!
Despite all the rosy predictions, the injury did hamper Red's game. He went south with the Chicago White Sox for spring training in 1934 but failed to make the team. A wire story from the Jewish Telegraphy Service the following spring had Red going to spring training with the New York Giants, but again he didn't make the cut. For the rest of the decade Red Solomon played the game he loved. You can find him playing with semi-pro teams like the Murray Hills and the Paterson Silk Stockings, both of which featured former major leaguers and college stars.
I tried as best as I could to find out what became of Red. I re-read Roberts Ehrgott's great book on the 1920's and 30's Cubs "Mr. Wrigley's Ballclub" looking for Solomon but he's not mentioned. Nor was he included in SABR's comprehensive study of the '29 Cubs "Winning on the Northside". Even the handful of books about Bill Veeck, Jr. fail to bring up his dad's signing of the 13 year-old third baseman. This is perhaps the biggest oversight as I can't help but hypothesize that Veeck Sr's 1929 stunt influenced Veeck Jr's 1951 Eddie Gaedel signing and all his subsequent big league hijinx.
Regardless, after 1940 Red disappears from newspapers and into the unpublicized normal lived most of us lead. My best guess is Red's the Samuel Solomon who passed away in 1991 aged 75, but I'm not positive. If it is, I wonder how Red looked back across all those decades to the summer of 1929 when he was the luckiest boy in the world...
Those
who have met me in person know I'm not the kind of guy to toot my own
horn. In fact, much to my detriment, I'm lousy about promoting myself.
That's why it's hard for me to ask this, but this is something that
needs to be done: if you bought a copy of The League of Outsider
Baseball, can you please take the time to write a review of it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Good Reads?
It would mean a lot to me and most importantly give future publishers
an idea of what the book reading public thinks of my work. Almost all of
the existing reader's reviews have been flattering, but every once in a
while some crackpot writes a clunker - like the creep on Good Reads
that said I should have had someone who knows English write the copy
(that was a surprise as Simon & Schuster's editing process is
quite impressive and very rigorous). I for one often look at the reviews
on those sites before I spend my money on a book. Reviews aren't the
only thing I rely on in my purchasing process but it's certainly a
factor, and that's why I'm asking you to please take the time to write
your thoughts about my work.
Last month I was honored to be a guest on the C-Dot Show here in Cincinnati (you can listen HERE). The all-baseball show is hosted by Reds beat writer C. Trent Rosecrans and pro comedian Josh Sneed. The two have Reds players, front office guys and sports writers on there and it's recorded live on stage at a bar called MOTR in the Over the Rhine section of town. MOTR's owner, Chris Varias, not only runs a great joint to drink and eat in, but also brings in live bands from all over the country to play every night. Varias is also a big baseball fan and the place is decorated with many pieces of baseball history. When I met Chris he asked me if I had heard of Bill Faul. I said I hadn't and he proceeded to tell me about this local baseball hero. This one's for Trent, Josh and Chris - thanks for having me on your great show and introducing me to this week's addition to The Infinite Baseball Card Set...
Indianapolis, 1969.
Everybody was staring at him, including the green-headed parakeet he had clutched in his hand. He was the oldest guy in the room - The Old Man. He was 28. Seven years earlier he was the best collegiate pitcher in the country, even made the front cover of the official college baseball guide. He'd played in the big leagues, been a Tiger and a Cub, had feature stories written about him in Life Magazine and the Chicago Tribune, yet now he was in the low end of the farm system of a lousy expansion team. The parakeet suddenly bobbed its head and took a bite out of his hand.
"That's it!" he yelled and bit the head off the bird, the feathers exploding into a cloud of bright green, temporarily separating him from the rest of the world.
Bill Faul was the best pitcher to ever come out of the University of Cincinnati. Since the university is known more for their basketball program and architecture school that might not seem like much, but you need to consider that Sandy Koufax pitched there, too. And Bill Faul was better. So good that the Cincinnati native became UC's first All-American and in 1961, his junior year, he was named the best college pitcher in the nation by the American Association of College Baseball Coaches. His side arm motion set baseball records at UC that still stand, including 24 strike outs in a game and lowest season season ERA - a microscopic 0.82 in '62.
But Faul was a flake. He was on a whole different planet than everyone else. There was the one time when he told UC's trainer he had a sore arm. The trainer had him position the ailing arm under an ordinary reading lamp. Fifteen minutes later Faul's sore arm was magically gone. Or take that 24 strike out game. The night before Faul's teammates informed hm that he'd be dropped into the ball park via parachute. Terrified, Faul couldn't sleep all night. Maybe it was the sudden release of his anxiety that made him loose enough to strike out those 24 batters.
Flake or no flake, when the official guide to collegiate baseball hit the newsstands in 1962 it featured Bill Faul of the University of Cincinnati on its cover.
The Detroit Tigers won the bidding war for Faul's services and after graduation he was sent to the Knoxville Smokies of the South Atlantic League to finish out the 1962 season. The college kid went 6 and 2 with an ERA just over 2 and next thing he knew he was up to the Detroit Tigers. The team was in Metropolitan Stadium on September 19, 1962 playing the Minnesota Twins, a measly 6,000 in attendance for the Wednesday day game. When starter Hank Aguirre started hemorrhaging runs in the fourth inning, manager Bob Scheffing took him out for a pinch hitter and sent Bill Faul to the bullpen to warm up.
As the bottom of the fifth started, Faul took the mound. The Twins were up 4 to 2. He was welcomed to the big leagues by Bernie Allen lining a single to right field, then walked Zoilo Versalles. Faul caught his breath and struck out Dick Stigman and Lenny Green in quick succession, then got Vic Power to ground out to second. Inning over, score still 4-2 Twins.
Bill Bruton opened up the Tigers' 6th with a tremendous home run but no one else could follow that up and Detroit still trailed by a run when Faul took the mound again. Richie Rollins hit an easy grounder to short and was tossed out, but that brought up Harmon Killebrew, the Twins slugger. Wielding one of the most powerful bats in the American League, The Killer knocked the next ball into the bleachers. 5-3 Twins. Faul began wavering. He beaned Bobby Allison who then wound up on third when Earl Battey singled to center. He retired Bobby Allen on a fly ball but Allison crossed the plate on a single by Versalles. A walk to Stigman loaded them up and another free pass scored Battey. Scheffing called Bob Humphreys in from the bullpen and sent Faul to the showers. Minutes later Vic Power knocked in all the runners with a grand slam.
It wasn't he greatest debut, but the Tigers were excited by Faul's potential. The pitcher spent the off-season teaching elementary school in Cincinnati and practicing karate, mastering the latter so well that he registered his hands and feet with the local cops as lethal weapons before reporting to spring training in 1963. He easily made the team.
The 1963 Tigers were a sluggish team going nowhere so Faul's 5-6 record doesn't look too bad when you put it in perspective. While he wasn't making waves with his fastball, he was causing ripples with his eccentricities. He showed up at spring training wearing a cowboy suit and riding a bicycle. When he was issued a Tigers uniform he insisted he wear number 13. New manager Charlie Dressen, a rough hewn, no-nonsense and all-business kind of guy, was perplexed by Faul. "You watch him for a while, watch how he acts, talk to him, spend some time with him, and you figure either he's the dumbest guy in the world or the smartest you've ever met."
The Tigers coaches tried to work with Faul. He had the pure ability but needed polishing. His delivery was all screwy - he'd flail around in a wind up and by the time he released the ball he was spread out like an octopus on the mound - somebody likened him to an impatient marionette. The coaches warned him over and over again that he'd be unable to field his position and sure enough, one game Faul was beaned in the keister by a screaming line drive. He also had a tendency to lose concentration and get wild, his fast ball rising up to the sweet spot where hitters love to see it. When old-school coaching methods didn't help, the college-educated pitcher turned to a more modern solution - Faul visited a psychiatrist.
Now in 1963 going to a psychiatrist - still referred to as a shrink or even head-shrinker in newspapers of the day - was pretty wild. The psychiatrist's prescription was even more out there: self hypnosis. The pitcher immersed himself in the theory behind hypnosis and began using it on himself, believing through the power of suggestion he could make his right arm keep his pitches low. Faul studied hypnotism throughout the off season and when the 1964 season started he spooked his manager Charlie Dressen and his teammates by putting himself in a trance before his first start. This unorthodox training regimen coupled with six earned runs in 5 innings got him a ticket to the minors. Faul struggled to a 4-7 record with Salt Lake City and in the winter doubled-down on the hypnosis. He'd just received his diploma from the Scientific Suggestion Institute when he found out the Chicago Cubs bought his contract.
While his hypnosis met with static on the stodgy Tigers, the Cubs club house was a bit more open. That's not to say his teammates weren't a bit spooked when Faul set up a record player on which he played a 45 that repeated "You're going to keep the baaaalllll dowwwwwn. You're going to pitch loooowwwww and awwwwaaaayyyy" over and over as he slipped into a hypnotic state. When the record ended he declared himself ready to pitch.
At first it seemed to work. In July and August Faul tossed three complete game shutouts. The other Cubs players soon warmed to Faul's hypnosis routine and even played along, snapping their fingers in his face after an inning as if the release him from a trance. It scarred the heck out of the opposing players and even manager Leo Durocher put up with it as long as he won. Opposing players tried teasing him, hollaring things and dangling swinging pocket watches at him from the dugout. Somewhere along the line he was given the nickname "Loony Tune", but still Faul had a respectable year, going 6 and 6 with a 3.54 ERA. The '65 Cubs were another in a long line of mediocre to bad teams, but they did make history by turning three triple plays in one season - and if that wasn't odd enough, they all happened when Faul was on the mound.
In the off season Faul practiced his karate, honed his hypnosis technique and earned a degree as a doctor of divinity in the Universal Church. When he joined the Cubs for 1966 he was a minor celebrity as the press fixated on him for lack of anything else interesting on the Cubs that spring. The Chicago Tribune wrote a long Sunday Magazine section on him and he figured prominently in a Life magazine feature where he shared his thoughts on the power of suggestion. But something was missing in 1966 and after a 1-4 record he was shipped to Tacoma.
It was in the minors that Bill Faul's eccentricities really went into over drive. Whether it was to scare or impress his younger teammates is not known, but the veteran pitcher began telling stories how he'd killed guys and liked to bite the heads off of cats and dogs as a kid. He also began eating live frogs because he claimed they put more hop on his fastball. The other bullpen pitchers would catch and rinse off the little green things and Faul would eat 'em with a glass of water, spitting out the tiny bones. As he slid further and further into the depths of the minor leagues, Faul's increasingly younger teammates were both scared and fascinated by him. It was while playing in the new expansion Kansas City Royals farm team out in Omaha that he made the big leagues of baseball lore by biting the head off that parakeet.
Bill Faul made it back to the majors for seven relief appearances with the San Francisco Giants in 1970 before he was sent back down for good. He returned to Cincinnati where he led a comparatively quiet life, passing away in 2002.
Mills Stadium on the west side of Chicago, August 21st, 1938.
Hack Wilson's uniform was ill-fitting, snug in all the wrong places. The wool was coarse and made the 38 year-old former Cubs star scratch and pull at the collar. Even though the ball game hadn't started yet, the grey flannel suit was completely soaked through with his sweat. If any of the sports writers who sat around him got close enough to take a whiff, they could probably discern what his choice of alcohol the previous night was. Still, the former National League Home Run and RBI Champ felt good to be back in Chicago. Although it was a mere 6 years since he last roamed the outfield for the Cubs, the ensuing seasons seemed like a lifetime.
Hack Wilson had been the National League's answer to Babe Ruth - all-swagger and raw talent packaged in as ungainly a body as ever seen on a ball field. His exuberance for the nightlife completely embodied Chicago of the Roarin' Twenties. He brawled and blustered, balked and boomed. Back then everyone was Hack's pal and Chicago was his town.
His fall was tremendous and tragic. In the season following his record 56 home runs and 191 RBI in 1930, Wilson went on a season-long slump that he never recovered from. The tyrannical Rogers Hornsby became Cubs manager that year and his relentless needling of Wilson was often whispered to be the reason behind the nosedive. Everyone knew Wilson was a juicer, a lover of the nightclub scene. For years he rode a fine line between controlling his alcohol consumption and falling prey to it, and in 1931 the later happened. He was sold to a miserable Brooklyn team in '32 then to the even lousier Phillies organization in '34. By 1935 he was released to Albany in the minor leagues, a side-show attraction roaming the outfield along side Alabama Pitts, the Sing Sing convict turned ballplayer. It was damned embarrassing. When they wanted to send him to Portland he got pissy, went home to Martinsburg, West Virginia and waited for a better offer to arrive. None did.
Hack shoveled his savings into a sporting goods store that failed. Then he and a partner opened up a tavern. Hack managed to drink away any profit the joint made, which was small due to his penchant for buying the whole house round after round. His drinking alienated his wife and son. As long as Hack had money he had a steady crew of bar room pals to keep him company. When his wife finally divorced him after 15 years, she took their house and what was left of his savings. Heck, she even took his hunting shotgun. The tap room pals evaporated and Hack's drunken former-jock act wore thin. Soon his adapted hometown of Martinsburg wasn't so friendly anymore. He met and married a woman named Hazel and waited for something to happen. In late July of 1938 it did.
A guy named Al Duffy showed up in Martinsburg and tracked Hack and Hazel to the back room of a bar the newly weds called home. The stranger had a proposition for the former star. Duffy owned a bar in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, close to where Hack Wilson was born. Duffy was a former ball player who managed a semi-pro team sponsored by the Tube City Brewery. The Tube City Brewers toured around the northern Midwest states playing industrial league and town teams promoting Tube City Pilsner. It wasn't the Cubs, or even the Phillies for that matter, but it was baseball and there was a paycheck attached to it. Hack and his wife ditched Martinsburg and moved to McKeesport. As part of his contract Hack acted as a greeter in Duffy's joint, not much of a stretch as he and Hazel set up house in the apartment attached to the bar and he would have spent his nights there anyway.
His signing to play with Tube City put Hack back in the sports pages again, if only for a short "what ever happened to" paragraph. From the beginning it was obvious this wasn't going to be the start of a miraculous comeback. Hack was woefully out of shape. His hulking muscles had turned soft and his eyesight was shot. Where once his mighty swing produced tremendous home run blasts, now all it seemed to produce was an ocean of sweat and a round of wheezing. In the games he appeared in he rarely made it past the 4th or 5th inning. Still, throughout small town Pennsylvania fans turned out to see the former star. Then in August he found out that Tube City was headed to Chicago.
If Hack ever thought he was forgotten in Chi he was mistaken. In the years he left town the Cubs had a series of first-rate ball clubs that always seemed to fall short. 1932 ended in a 4 game sweep by the Yanks with the added humiliation of Babe Ruth's called shot. The Tigers mauled the 1935 squad beyond recognition. Now in the summer of '38 the Cubbies had another pennant winner. Even with new stars Gabby Hartnett, Stan Hack, Phil Cavarretta and Billy Herman, Cubs fans remembered Hack Wilson. The slugger brought to mind the care-free days before the Great Depression brought a curtain of misery down on America's Second City. When the Tube City Brewers arrived at Mills Stadium for their doubleheader on August 21st, the press was there to meet Hack.
The old slugger gave his longest press interview in more than half a decade. He dished on the animosity between he and Hornsby in the summer of 1931. The normally magnanimous Wilson laid the blame for his wipe out on Hornsby's strict rules and vindictive fines. Hack sent the pencils scribbling when he told the reporters Hornsby was insanely jealous of Wilson's $33,000 salary that year. Not one to pass along all the blame, Hack admitted he liked to drink and that he did over-do it at times. He told the sports writers that the biggest mistake of his career was turning down the Portland gig. He believed now that it was actually a chance for him to manage. Though the old slugger smiled his broad smile throughout the presser, the scribes could see a wistful look in his eyes. Today, Hack Wilson was as close to 1930 than he had ever been in the past six years.
What Hack Wilson saw when he emerged from the club house at Mills Stadium moved him beyond words. More than 8,000 screaming fans packed the wooden bleachers to see him. The adoring crowd overflowed onto the playing field and just his presence on the field provoked a roar of approval. The game was nothing special. It was a humid August afternoon and Hack was drowning in his sweat. Although he usually couldn't last longer than the sixth inning, he played the entire first game. Every time he came to the plate the stands erupted with applause. Each time his old legs carried him back to snag a pop up, the cheering increased. Riding this wave of admiration which he hadn't felt for years, Wilson managed to play up until the fifth inning of the second game before exhaustion got the better of him. He'd managed just one single the entire afternoon, yet when it was announced he was leaving the field the roar was so intense Hack stayed in to coach first base. For one day, Hack Wilson was able to make all the years between 1930 and 1938 disappear.
It was all down hill after that day in August. He quit playing ball shortly afterwards and focused on drinking. He and Hazel moved to Brooklyn where he had a short career as a night club singer and greeter in a steakhouse across the street from Ebbets Field. He then moved back to Chicago and did the same at a roadhouse re-named "Hack Wilson's House of Seven Gables" after him. The months passed by in blurr of beer and whiskey. He and Hazel made their home in a room behind a bar on Milwaukee Avenue. At one point he was paid to umpire a semi-pro game. Like the Tube City game the year before, thousands showed up just to see Hack on a baseball field again. After the promoters dragged Wilson to the ball park in a drunken haze, he passed out on the field in the third inning. Now even the Chicago fans gave up on old Hack.
Somehow he wound up in Baltimore during the war. Like thousands of other drifters he and Hazel were lured to Charm City by the lucrative defense plant factory jobs. His first wife passed away and his own boy didn't want anything to do with him. Forgotten, Wilson somehow found the strength to kick the booze habit that had been a part of him since he was a kid. He even pulled himself together enough to appear as a guest on a radio program about the evils of alcohol. Unfortunately the years of abuse had done its damage to his body - his liver was shot and he was was suffering from influenza and a bunch of other internal plumbing problems. In November of 1948 Hazel called the ambulance after he fell and didn't get up. He died the next day of the typical alcoholic death - pulmonary edema - his lungs filled with water and he drowned from the inside out.
Shortly afterwards Hazel was sent to a mental hospital. When no one claimed the body donations from bar patrons along Baltimore's North Avenue helped cover the costs. The National League was shamed into throwing in $350 so their former home run and RBI champ could avoid a pauper's grave. At Hazel's request, some of Hack's old pals from Martinsburg drove to Baltimore to take his body back to West Virginia.
In what has to be one of the more tragic sidebars to an already tragic life, Hack's old team, the Chicago Cubs, claimed they were planning on finding a place for their former star in their organization. Whether the Cubs front office made it up to look like good guys or not, it didn't really matter. This was 1948, along way away from 1930, or even 1938 for that matter.
The story of the Cubs greatest slugger, Hack Wilson, always interested me. When I started writing this blog four years ago, I always wanted to do a story on Hack, his rise and fall has got to be one of the most dramatic in all of baseball history, with the exception being maybe Slim Jones. When I started to look for details on Wilson I was shocked by the lack of modern research on him. Even the Society of American Baseball Researchers website which boasts the encyclopedic SABR Biography Project does not have an entry for Hack. Luckily I found Clifton Parker's book "Fouled Away: The Baseball Tragedy of Hack Wilson". Parker did a fantastic job of bringing Hack to life again and thoroughly recounts the years after he fell from grace. However, the idea for this story comes from a few 1938 newspaper accounts I found written when Hack returned to Chicago with the Tube City Brewers. One of them was accompanied by a photograph of a bloated Wilson wearing an ill-fitting uniform with the name of the beer he and his team were promoting. It took more than four years, but when I saw it, I knew that I had found the illustration and story I wanted for The Infinite Baseball Card Set.
It's
odd today to think that of the hundreds of native Puerto Rican
ballplayers who have played in the majors to date, the first one debuted
only as recently as 1942. That he only played 4 seasons of big league
ball and the average baseball fan probably never heard of him doesn't
mean he doesn't have a hell of a story...
On December 27, 1951 Almante, Mexico police officer Ambrosio
Castillo Cano was escorting a suspected car thief to jail. Officer Cano
had apprehended the man as he tried to sell his '47 Buick for a few
hundred dollars, suspiciously way below what it was actually worth. When
officer Cano asked to see the ownership and registration papers the suspect couldn't
produce them which caused his arrest. As the pair rode to the police
station, the suspect suddenly attacked the officer, causing him to
fatally shoot the suspect. As he lie bleeding in the street outside the town
bus station, the suspect used his dying words to utter "I
am a member of a communist cell on an important mission". It was an odd
story but one that possibly would have ran under the radar had this
suspected car thief and Commie agent not been Hi Bithorn, former Major League
baseball player and nothing short of a hero in his native Puerto Rico.
Hiram
Gabriel Bithorn-Sosa was the husky offspring of a Dutch mother and Puerto Rican
father. 6-1 and 200lbs, Bithorn made a name for himself on the island as
a star basketball player, playing for the national team in the 1935
Central American and Caribbean Games. Unfortunately there was no future
for even the greatest basketball players back then - the sport was still
an amateur and collegiate novelty. Besides, Hi loved baseball and there
was indeed a future in that.
Puerto Rico had
produced a number of good home grown talent, but unfortunately their
avenue of advancement was severely hampered by their skin tone. It was
tough enough already for a lily-white Latino to make it in organized
baseball in America, but the darker the skin pigment, the fewer
opportunities there were. Unfortunately guys like Pancho Coimbre,
Millito Navarro and Perucho Cepeda (Orlando Cepeda's pop) would be known
only to fans of outsider baseball, simply because they were judged too
dark.
But not so with
Hi Bithorn. By 1936 the sturdy pitcher had made enough waves with his
semi-pro Leones de Ponce team that people began to take
notice. When the visiting Brooklyn Eagles Negro League team came to Puerto Rico in the spring of 1936, they were a little light in pitching. The team, featuring Hall of Famers Buck Leonard, Ray Dandridge and Leon Day, tapped the 20 year-old Puerto Rican to start their game against the Cincinnati Reds. For seven innings the young Bithorn held the big leaguers to a single run before yeilding 3 to tie the game up. Brooklyn eventually won the game and the young pitcher became a national hero. Along with his local fame, his credible performance brought Major League interest. Besides a good fastball, Bithorn's pigment was working in his
favor as well: as a light skinned Puerto Rican with one European parent,
Bithorn was deemed racially safe enough to be signed by the best ballclub in the world - the New York
Yankees.
In
the States, Bithorn consistently posted winning records: 16-9 with
Norfolk in 1936 followed by 17-9 for Norfolk and Binghamton the next
year. However, no matter how many games he won or how high he climbed in
the Yankees chain, he was stuck behind one of the best pitching staffs
in the majors - Lefty Gomez, Red Ruffing, Spud Chandler, Bump Hadley,
Monte Pearson, Atley Donald, Johnny Murphy - the Yanks pitching staff
was a never ending rotation of All-Star arms. No matter how good he was,
the Yankees simply had no room for him. Luckily, after a half dozen
years stuck on the Yankees farm, Bithorn was picked up by the New York
Giants and then acquired by the Chicago Cubs in 1941.
After
winning the pennant in 1938, the Cubs never recovered from their 4 game
sweep by the Yankees in the World Series. Their pitching staff was a
mess and looking for a miracle, so in the spring of 1942 all eyes were
on their new Puerto Rican import. Carrying the honor and responsibility
of being the very first from his island to make it to the majors,
Bithorn put up a 9-14 record for the year. As is so often the story,
numbers don't tell the whole story of course - the Cubbies were
miserable in '42 and when you take Bithorn's 3.68 ERA in account his
year looks a little more promising. 1943 was his breakout year, easily
establishing himself as the Cubs ace by going 18-12 with a nice 2.60
ERA. His seven shutouts topped the National League and the future seemed
bright for Chicago's newest star.
Unfortunately
World War Two was raging and Bithorn enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The Cubs ace was quoted in newspapers as quiping "after being with a losing team many years, I am now joining an outfit that can't lose."
Stationed at the San Juan Naval Air Station, the Navy put Bithorn's star status in
Puerto Rico to good use as manager of a service team that entertained
troops and raised money for the Red Cross and other causes. It was
during his time in the service that Bithorn may have suffered the first
of a succession of arm injuries, which was compounded by packing on over 25 pounds (some reports state as much as 45lbs) from solid Navy food.
Discharged in September of 1945,
Bithorn missed out on the Cubs pennant and World Series but was expected
to be an integral part of their post-war plans. As he did before the
war he joined the San Juan Senators for the Puerto Rican Winter League
season and helped lead the team to the Championship against Mayaguez. It
was during that series that Bithorn suffered an injury to his arm
during a play at the plate. The injury was still unhealed when he joined
the Cubs in the spring of 1946 and seemed to worsen as the summer wore
on. By the end of the season he was relegated to the bullpen and managed
a weak 6-5 record. It was clear he no longer had his stuff and the Cubs
sold their former ace to the Pirates who quickly sold him to the White
Sox.
Bithorn returned
to Chicago in 1947 but pitched just 2 innings in as many games before he
was released to the Hollywood Stars who cut him loose after 4 games.
Realizing he needed help, Bithorn underwent surgery on his arm and sat
out the 1948 season in the hopes his arm would recover. His comeback
fizzled out after he gave up 65 hits in 46 innings during a season split
between Oklahoma City and Nashville. Still wanting to stay in the game,
Bithorn changed uniforms and learned to be an umpire. He completed his
training and was hired by the Pioneer League for the 1951 season, the
first Puerto Rican umpire in organized baseball. After the season
Bithorn went south to Mexico to attempt a comeback in the Mexican Winter
League. When the season ended, Bithorn loaded up his '47 Buick and began the long lonely drive back to the United States.
He made it as far as the dusty little town of Almante.
That's right, the deceased secret agent car thief was
Hi Bithorn. When the press got wind of Puerto Rico's first big leaguer's
death and questions started to be asked, Officer Cano's story started
coming apart. For starters, why the hell would Hi Bithorn be selling his
Buick, his only means of transportation, in the middle of nowhere?
Plus, the former Cub had over a thousand U.S. dollars on his person,
negating the theory he needed some quick cash. And that whole Commie
confession? Bithorn's brother swore up and down his brother was no Red.
In the paranoid Cold War atmosphere of 1951, Officer Cano probably
figured he'd be looked on as a hero for gunning down a real Red spy.
Probably thought he'd get a medal. No, it became pretty obvious Officer
Cano was an inept shakedown artist with a badge and he had murdered an
unarmed Hi Bithorn. The Mexican justice system agreed and Cano was
sentanced, albeit to a paltry 8 years for the ballplayer's execution.
It was a sad and
pointless end to a promising life. While in America his role as the very
first of a long line of fine Puerto Rican ballplayers is a footnote at
best, back in Puerto Rico, Hi Bithorn is far from forgotten. When it
came time to name the island's biggest and most modern baseball stadium
in 1962, it was a given that it would bear the name "Estadio Hiram
Bithorn" in his honor.
By the morning of March 4th, 1945, the boys of G Company, 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment, 5th Infantry Division had become hardened veterans. Most had just arrived in Europe barely 3 months before and now those same freshly minted young soldiers had checked the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, chased their asses back across the Rhine and were now slugging their way into the Third Reich itself. The war was close to being over with, the Allies gaining more momentum everyday and the enemy knew it. If the Germans were only fighting the western powers they most likely would have caved in already. However, on the other side of Germany the Soviets were smashing towards Berlin and every day they held out meant more Germans could make their way west to be captured or at least get to an area occupied by the western Allies. No one wanted to be around when the Russians came so the war ground on.
The boys of G Company probably didn’t care much about the reason why the Germans still fought them tooth and nail. Each man had had his life interrupted and shipped half way around the globe to stop an evil that was threatening to swallow the whole world. The boys of G Company had left pretty young wives, anxious mothers, college classrooms or good jobs and took up a Garand Rifle to do their part. Complaining about what they were missing out on was pointless - the fella next to you had the same story. Maybe even better than yours. Nah, complaining wouldn’t do any good. Best thing was to keep marching forward and get this over with. As they wearily crossed the makeshift bridge built over the Kyll River they just cared about the fight they had ahead of them that afternoon and the one after that and the one after that until these Krauts threw in the towel.
If any of the boys in G Company were still sleepy, chances are the mortar fire that greeted them as the crossed the bridge woke them up. The enemy they’d been chasing since Luxembourg had dug in around the town of Erdorf. As the German lines collapsed and contracted the enemy became more dense, more desperate. Besides regular infantry, G Company was marching right into redeployed artillery and Panzer units. As they pushed forward the resistance became stiffer and more determined. Each gain was met with vicious counter-attacks and artillery barrages.
G Company was deployed to sweep the fields around the village of Erdorf. This was pleasant farm land of rolling little green hills and blooming trees. To the boys of G Company, the area they were clearing of enemy troops looked a lot like familiar places in the northeast and Midwest United States. Perhaps more than a few were suddenly lost in thoughts of an afternoon spent in surroundings much like this. The boys of G Company thought back to little places they left behind called Sussex County, Washington Courthouse, Mechanicsburg or Crescent Springs.
To the officers of G Company, this place was just called Hill 378.
The company spread out and took a low hill like they had countless other times in the last three months. All very textbook. Regrouping and moving forward, they entered a wooded area where entrenched German troops and the Panzer tanks were waiting. This obstacle, too, was eventually beaten aside by G Company and just like every other hill and wood and field G Company had cleared in the past three months, they left behind some of their own. As the troops emerged on the other side of the wood and continued eastward into Germany, one of the 32 boys they left behind that afternoon was 22 year-old Private First Class Bill Niemeyer of Crescent Springs, Kentucky. The life he had put on hold in order to beat back the evil that darkened the world consisted of his young wife Marie, infant daughters Deanna Gail and Mary Johanna and a promising pitching career in the Chicago Cubs organization.
Even though Bill Niemeyer never made it up to the Cubs, I wanted to depict Bill in a Chicago uniform. Was he good enough to have eventually made it to Wrigley Field? I don’t know. We will never know. The same as we will never know what any of the other boys in G Company who died that afternoon in Germany would have accomplished in their lives. The one thing I do know is that is their sacrifices, all veteran’s sacrifices, made it possible for me to have a good life in the greatest country in the world. As I sit here writing this, I can see and hear my neighbors enjoying this beautiful Memorial Day weekend. The shouts of the boys next door, the couple across the street putting a pair of mountain bikes in their SUV and the girl on the corner attempting to train her new puppy on her green front lawn. In a few hours I will be going over to see my fiancé who I love very much, and share a nice, lazy summer evening. All that I see and hear right at this very moment was possible because of men and women like Bill Niemeyer, a 22 year-old promising ballplayer who once lived right down the street from where I sit right now, the place he left to go off to war and never saw again.
Many thanks to Gary Bedingfield who is the foremost authority on baseball and World war II. While looking around for a ballplayer to feature this Memorial Day I of course consulted his amazing website www.baseballinwartime.com. Consulting a page he constructed showing the many professional ballplayers who died fighting for our country, Bill Niemeyer jumped off the screen. He was born and raised right where I was sitting. I might even pass his relatives at the market or live next door. The fact that he came from this place made his sacrife a bit more personal for me, especially as I sat there with a nice fresh cup of coffee by an open window enjoying the beautiful Kentucky scenery he never saw again. The place of his death was even more interesting as that part of Germany looks very similar to what he had grown up in. I’m glad I found Bill’s name on that website and I encourage every other baseball fan to take a look at Gary Bedingfield’s monumental work. His site features in-depth articles about hundreds (actually it might even be thousands of entries by now!) of players who found themselves in the service during the war. Gary is also an author of two indispensable books on the subject, "Baseball's Dead of World War II: A Roster Of Professional Players Who Died" and one of my personal favorites, "Baseball In World War II Europe (part of the Images of Sports series)."
By the morning of March 4th, 1945, the boys of G Company, 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment, 5th Infantry Division had become hardened veterans. Most had just arrived in Europe barely 3 months before and now those same freshly minted young soldiers had checked the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, chased their asses back across the Rhine and were now slugging their way into the Third Reich itself. The war was close to being over with, the Allies gaining more momentum everyday and the enemy knew it. If the Germans were only fighting the western powers they most likely would have caved in already. However, on the other side of Germany the Soviets were smashing towards Berlin and every day they held out meant more Germans could make their way west to be captured or at least get to an area occupied by the western Allies. No one wanted to be around when the Russians came so the war ground on.
The boys of G Company probably didn’t care much about the reason why the Germans still fought them tooth and nail. Each man had had his life interrupted and shipped half way around the globe to stop an evil that was threatening to swallow the whole world. The boys of G Company had left pretty young wives, anxious mothers, college classrooms or good jobs and took up a Garand Rifle to do their part. Complaining about what they were missing out on was pointless - the fella next to you had the same story. Maybe even better than yours. Nah, complaining wouldn’t do any good. Best thing was to keep marching forward and get this over with. As they wearily crossed the makeshift bridge built over the Kyll River they just cared about the fight they had ahead of them that afternoon and the one after that and the one after that until these Krauts threw in the towel.
If any of the boys in G Company were still sleepy, chances are the mortar fire that greeted them as the crossed the bridge woke them up. The enemy they’d been chasing since Luxembourg had dug in around the town of Erdorf. As the German lines collapsed and contracted the enemy became more dense, more desperate. Besides regular infantry, G Company was marching right into redeployed artillery and Panzer units. As they pushed forward the resistance became stiffer and more determined. Each gain was met with vicious counter-attacks and artillery barrages.
G Company was deployed to sweep the fields around the village of Erdorf. This was pleasant farm land of rolling little green hills and blooming trees. To the boys of G Company, the area they were clearing of enemy troops looked a lot like familiar places in the northeast and Midwest United States. Perhaps more than a few were suddenly lost in thoughts of an afternoon spent in surroundings much like this. The boys of G Company thought back to little places they left behind called Sussex County, Washington Courthouse, Mechanicsburg or Crescent Springs.
To the officers of G Company, this place was just called Hill 378.
The company spread out and took a low hill like they had countless other times in the last three months. All very textbook. Regrouping and moving forward, they entered a wooded area where entrenched German troops and the Panzer tanks were waiting. This obstacle, too, was eventually beaten aside by G Company and just like every other hill and wood and field G Company had cleared in the past three months, they left behind some of their own. As the troops emerged on the other side of the wood and continued eastward into Germany, one of the 32 boys they left behind that afternoon was 22 year-old Private First Class Bill Niemeyer of Crescent Springs, Kentucky. The life he had put on hold in order to beat back the evil that darkened the world consisted of his young wife Marie, infant daughters Deanna Gail and Mary Johanna and a promising pitching career in the Chicago Cubs organization.
Even though Bill Niemeyer never made it up to the Cubs, I wanted to depict Bill in a Chicago uniform. Was he good enough to have eventually made it to Wrigley Field? I don’t know. We will never know. The same as we will never know what any of the other boys in G Company who died that afternoon in Germany would have accomplished in their lives. The one thing I do know is that is their sacrifices, all veteran’s sacrifices, made it possible for me to have a good life in the greatest country in the world. As I sit here writing this, I can see and hear my neighbors enjoying this beautiful Memorial Day weekend. The shouts of the boys next door, the couple across the street putting a pair of mountain bikes in their SUV and the girl on the corner attempting to train her new puppy on her green front lawn. In a few hours I will be going over to see my girlfriend who I love very much, and share a nice, lazy summer evening. All that I see and hear right at this very moment was possible because of men and women like Bill Niemeyer, a 22 year-old promising ballplayer who once lived right down the street from where I sit right now, the place he left to go off to war and never saw again.
Many thanks to Gary Bedingfield who is the foremost authority on baseball and World war II. While looking around for a ballplayer to feature this Memorial Day I of course consulted his amazing website www.baseballinwartime.com. Consulting a page he constructed showing the many professional ballplayers who died fighting for our country, Bill Niemeyer jumped off the screen. He was born and raised right where I was sitting. I might even pass his relatives at the market or live next door. The fact that he came from this place made his sacrife a bit more personal for me, especially as I sat there with a nice fresh cup of coffee by an open window enjoying the beautiful Kentucky scenery he never saw again. The place of his death was even more interesting as that part of Germany looks very similar to what he had grown up in. I’m glad I found Bill’s name on that website and I encourage every other baseball fan to take a look at Gary Bedingfield’s monumental work. His site features in-depth articles about hundreds (actually it might even be thousands of entries by now!) of players who found themselves in the service during the war. Gary is also an author of two indispensable books on the subject, "Baseball's Dead of World War II: A Roster Of Professional Players Who Died" and one of my personal favorites, "Baseball In World War II Europe (part of the Images of Sports series)."
